Sex differences in costly signaling in rural Western China

Abstract

Costly rituals convey commitment to communities and advertise trustworthiness and cooperativeness to peers, which might explain why humans perform costly religious rituals. Here, we compare the efficacy of occasional public displays versus regular but less public acts for prestige enhancement. We collected data on religious behaviors ranging from daily low-cost practices to infrequent high-cost pilgrimages to distant locations among residents of an agricultural Tibetan village, as well as their reputational standings. We find that religious practices are mediated by demographic factors such as wealth, age and gender. Women perform more daily religious activities, but men engage more in distant pilgrimages. Participation in distant pilgrimages increases the perception of all prosocial characteristics. In contrast, daily practices are positively associated with nominations for devoutness but not for other qualities. Devoutness is sometimes negatively associated with other reputational qualities, suggesting that religiosity might be not only about signaling prosociality.